LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw, famed for classic recordings of "Begin the Beguine" and "Oh, Lady Be Good" as well as turbulent marriages to movie stars Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, died on Thursday at age 94, his manager Will Curtis said.

Shaw, who died at his Los Angeles-area home, had been in ill health for several years since he fell and broke a hip while walking his dog, Curtis said.

"He was in tremendous pain," he added.

Born Arnold Jacob Arshawsky to a seamstress mother and photographer father in New York City on May 23, 1910, Shaw was about as restless a jazz star as one could find.

He formed and reformed bands, married and divorced eight times, gave up music for more than 30 years and put down his clarinet in 1954 never to play it in public again, quitting at age 44.

Critics dismissed his work at first. But soon they hailed him as a unique voice in swing-era jazz, especially for his beautiful tone and control of his instrument's top register.

The Down Beat critic Howard Mandel once wrote: "In Shaw's lips and hands the clarinet bent as pliantly as a blade of grass; it thrilled him to make glissandi, fast or sad melodies, and wonderful virtuosic turns."

Among his famous songs were a 1938 rendition of "Begin the Beguine," which made him a national star and chief rival to legendary clarinetist Benny Goodman, "Oh, Lady Be Good," "Stardust," "Indian Love Call" and "Frenesi."

He once said the success of "Begin the Beguine" was like an anchor around his neck.

As smooth as his tone was, Shaw was a man at war with himself. A crusty, self-declared perfectionist, Shaw gave up the clarinet because he said could not reach the level of artistry he desired.

In 1981, he ended a long musical intermission by reorganizing a band that bore his name and played his music -- but with another clarinetist, Dick Johnson, leading the orchestra and playing the solos Shaw made famous.

Shaw traveled with the orchestra as a guest host and sometime conductor of the band's signature opening number, "Nightmare."

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“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

The photo is from Rock N Roll High School, which she was in, but the farewell is for Johnny Ramone.

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Chris Cooper's son dies, 17

BOSTON -- Jess Lanier Cooper, the 17-year-old son of Academy Award-winning actor Chris Cooper, has died at the family's home in Kingston, a spokeswoman said Tuesday. The teenager died Monday of natural causes related to his cerebral palsy, family spokeswoman Cara Tripicchio said. A memorial service was scheduled for Saturday in Duxbury. Cooper's parents are advocates for children with special needs and insisted their son attend mainstream classes at Silver Lake Regional High School, where he earned a place on the honor roll. The teenager was the only child of Cooper and his wife, actress Marianne Leone, who has appeared on the HBO series, "The Sopranos." Chris Cooper, 53, won an Oscar for best supporting actor last year for his role as an orchid thief in the movie "Adaptation." (AP)

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“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

Thelma White, whose portrayal of a hard-boiled addiction queen in the 1936 movie "Reefer Madness" was largely forgotten until the film resurfaced in the 1970s as a cult classic, died of pneumonia Tuesday at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills. She was 94.

Born in 1910, White was a carnival performer as a toddler, progressed to vaudeville, radio and movies, then worked as an agent and producer for many years. During her heyday as an actress, she appeared alongside such legendary performers as W.C. Fields, Will Rogers, Red Skelton and Jack Benny. What secured her place in Hollywood history, however, was a movie so awful that its memory still made her shudder 50 years later.

"Reefer Madness" was a low-budget propaganda film written by a religious group to broadcast the dangers of marijuana. It was relegated to the cinema waste heap for almost 40 years until 1972, when Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws discovered it in the Library of Congress archives and paid $297 for a print. He then screened it in New York as a benefit for the advocacy group, unwittingly launching it on the road to cult-film history.

The movie was seen by Robert Shaye, who recognized its appeal as a hilarious, if unintentional, parody. He re-released it through his then-fledgling company, New Line Cinema, holding midnight showings until the film became a high-camp hit, especially popular on college campuses. (Based on early successes such as "Reefer Madness," New Line grew into a force in the entertainment industry, responsible for "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and other hits.)

Today the film that critic Leonard Maltin calls "the granddaddy of all 'Worst' movies" still commands a loyal audience on the cult circuit. Amazon.com ranks it No. 35 on its list of 100 bestselling cult-movie videos, and it has been viewed free more than 19,000 times in recent years at http://www.archive.org/movies .

"I'm ashamed to say that it's the only one of my films that's become a classic," White, who made more than 40 movies and shorts during the 1930s and 1940s, told The Times in a 1987 interview.

"I hide my head when I think about it," she said, adding that it was "a dreadful film."

Born Thelma Wolpa in Lincoln, Neb., White was the daughter of itinerant carnival performers who traveled throughout the Midwest. She made her debut at age 2 when her parents stuck her in a line of dolls and at the appropriate moment cued her to start cooing and wiggling.

By 10 she was dancing and singing in vaudeville as the younger member of an act called "The White Sisters," even though she was unrelated to the other half of the duo. They were such a hit that White recalled her mother sewing $1,000 bills into her corset for safekeeping.

After stints with the Ziegfeld Follies and Earl Carroll revues, White turned to movies, signing in 1928 with RKO Studios, which cast her in B movies such as "A Night in a Dormitory," "Sixteen Sweeties" and "Ride 'Em Cowboy!"

In 1935, the musical and comedy actress, to her horror, was asked to star in a movie about teenagers lured into marijuana addiction. White was to play one of the adults who push the "demon weed" on unsuspecting youths. As a starlet still on contract to RKO, she had little choice but to accept the role of Mae, a tough blond who lures high school students to her apartment for back-parlor sex and marijuana orgies.

The characters come to dismal ends ? one of the addicted teenagers shoots his girlfriend when she comes to rescue him, while another victim of the "evil weed" runs over and kills a hapless pedestrian. The "ghastly menace" of marijuana sends other characters to the insane asylum and death by leaping out a window.

Rife with overacting and arch melodrama, the movie was a flop. Furthering the insult, the rights were sold to a producer of exploitation films, who screened it on the rural circuit after adding tawdry sex scenes.

Despite her unwholesome role in what became one of the most notorious exploitation movies of the 1930s, White continued to earn featured parts in traveling revues in the United States and abroad.

Misfortune struck at the end of World War II, when, as a USO performer in the Aleutian Islands, she contracted a crippling illness and was told she would never walk again. After several years, she recovered sufficiently to embark on a new career as an agent for such actors as Robert Blake, James Coburn, Ann Jillian, Dolores Hart and Robert Fuller.

In later years, White produced television and movie projects, including the 1969 feature "Tom Jones Rides Again," in which she also co-starred.

Wed three times, she said her third marriage, in 1957, to actor and costume designer Tony Millard was her happiest. Until his death in 1999, they lived in a modest Panorama City bungalow with a collection of 300 videotapes, including two copies of "Reefer Madness."

The movie also inspired an award-winning musical play by the same name that ran off-Broadway after opening in 1999 at the Hudson Backstage Theatre in Hollywood.

White, despite her reliance on a wheelchair and oxygen tank, saw the show twice. Any discomfort caused by the notoriety of the movie was dispelled by the play, which unreservedly spoofed it.

The production "was campy and over the top, and she loved it," Michael Homeier, her godson and only survivor, said Wednesday.

A hospital administrator said he had been admitted to hospital because of a blood clot in his brain after falling in his home.

"He suffered a head injury due to the fall and didn't really recover," Anupam Verma of Mumbai's Hinduja hospital told the Associated Press.

His death has saddened the Bollywood fraternity who say he will be hard to replace.

"The film industry has lost a giant," said film director Govind Nihalani who had worked with Puri in 14 films spread over 25 years.

Other directors paid him rich tributes saying he was a "director's actor".

The younger brother of a Bollywood character actor, Madan Puri, Amrish Puri had a relatively late start in the industry at the age of 40, making his debut in 1971 with the film Reshma Aur Shera (Reshma and Shera).

He caught the attention of the box office with several hits in the 1980s and 90s including Vidhaata (God), Phool Aur Kaante (Flowers and Thorns), Mr India and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (Big Hearts Will Win Their Brides).

It was his role as the villain Mogambo in Mr India and his famous line, "Mogambo Khush Hua (Mogambo is pleased)" that raised Puri's profile and earned him recognition as one of Bollywood's best known character actors.

Hollywood

His last major hit was the film Hulchul (Uproar) which was released in December.

But it was Spielberg's second film in the Indiana Jones trilogy that won him international recognition when he played the bald-headed high priest Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Puri also had a minor role in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi playing the Indian independence leader's Muslim sponsor in South Africa.

Virginia Mayo, a 1940s screen siren who co-starred opposite such greats as Danny Kaye and James Cagney, died near Los Angeles on Monday of pneumonia and heart failure, the Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site. She was 84.

Mayo, whose films included "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" "White Heat" and "The Best Years of Our Lives" died in a nursing home near her residence in Thousand Oaks, California, the newspaper quoted a family friend as saying.

Famed for her peaches-and-cream complexion and curvaceous figure, the St. Louis native appeared in more than 40 films during the 1940s and '50s, equally adept at comedies and dramas.

A former vaudeville performer, she made her Hollywood debut in the 1943 movie "Jack London," starring her future husband, Michael O'Shea.

She teamed with Kaye the following year in "Up in Arms," and they reunited over the next few years in "The Kid From Brooklyn" "A Song Is Born," and "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."

Perhaps her most memorable role was as the unscrupulous wife of Cagney's gangster character in the 1949 crime melodrama "White Heat."

"Jimmy was the master actor, the most dynamic star the screen ever had," Mayo told the Los Angeles Times in 1981. "His acting was so real that I was really scared half the time we were on the set."

Her other credits included "Captain Horatio Hornblower" with Gregory Peck; "The Silver Chalice" with Paul Newman; and "The Flame and the Arrow" with Burt Lancaster.

After her career faded in the early 1960s, she did stage and dinner theater work. She was married to O'Shea from 1947 until his death in 1973. She is survived by a daughter, Mary Johnston.

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“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Johnny Carson, the "Tonight Show" TV host who served America a smooth nightcap of celebrity banter, droll comedy and heartland charm for 30 years, has died. He was 79.

"Mr. Carson passed away peacefully early Sunday morning," his nephew, Jeff Sotzing, told The Associated Press. "He was surrounded by his family, whose loss will be immeasurable. There will be no memorial service."

Sotzing would not give further details, including the time of death or the location.

The boyish-looking Nebraska native with the disarming grin, who survived every attempt to topple him from his late-night talk show throne, was a star who managed never to distance himself from his audience.

His wealth, the adoration of his guests - particularly the many young comics whose careers he launched - the wry tales of multiple divorces: Carson's air of modesty made it all serve to enhance his bedtime intimacy with viewers.

"Heeeeere's Johnny!" was the booming announcement from sidekick Ed McMahon that ushered Carson out to the stage. Then the formula: the topical monologue, the guests, the broadly played skits such as "Carnac the Magnificent."

But America never tired of him; Carson went out on top when he retired in May 1992. In his final show, he told his audience: "And so it has come to this. I am one of the lucky people in the world. I found something that I always wanted to do and I have enjoyed every single minute of it."

His personal life could not match the perfection of his career. Carson was married four times, divorced three. In 1991, one of his three sons, 39-year-old Ricky, was killed in a car accident.

Nearly all of Carson's professional life was spent in television, from his postwar start at Nebraska stations in the late 1940s to his three decades with NBC's "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson."

Carson choose to let "Tonight" stand as his career zenith and his finale, withdrawing into a quiet retirement that suited his private nature and refusing involvement in other show business projects.

In 1993, he explained his absence from the limelight.

"I have an ego like anybody else," Carson told The Washington Post, "but I don't need to be stoked by going before the public all the time."

Yea, I was gonna mention that soon. Dave and Conan are in reruns this week so everyone better be tuned into Leno this monday night for something special (never thought i'd say that).

The only "good" that could come out of all this is better dvd releases of carson's great work, much like when the great Jack Paar passed on. Carson put everyone to shame as a host and as a person. While Conan will have no problem filling Leno's shoes in 2009, nobody will ever fill Johnny Carson's.

It's always sad when someone who is this beloved dies. I feel depressed and somewhat deprived for not having gotten to experience watching Carson in work. I was born in 1985, thus making me a bit past his time. I have seen infomercials and various other programs and witnessed his impeccable charm and timing as a host. He definitely was the best and more than likely will always be.